Characteristics of a Terrible Worship SOng

I would add any song that could just as easily be sung to your boyfriend/girlfriend is a bad worship song.

 

Ah yes, the boyfriend songs.

Now, up front I prefer hymns, but do wish our song leader did them in the key written. He changes them to a much higher register and we struggle. I have to stop singing at times because my throat begins to ache with the strain of too high a key. I'm female, so I figure the men must really be struggling.

We do a good blend, and it usually IS good. There are many new hymns being written and some are just wonderful.

But Sunday we started with a boyfriend song, complete with lines about "your warm embrace."

Um, I didn't sing it as it sounded like a torch song to me. And it was all about the singer in my mind. But I watched as the men winced and hushed. They just couldn't sing such a sensual sounding song "to Jesus" as instructed. Not as men. Yeah, men are also part of the Bride of Christ but morning preaching service isn't the place to sing about the honeymoon.

 

Yes, these songs are embarrassing for men to sing. I'm tempted to sit down when they are sung.

 

For me, it's not the repetition, so much as the contemporary seems to incorporate incessant repetition. In some cases it's like they sacrificed theology for emotional manipulation through repetition. Sure, a song with a chorus is going to have the same chorus sung several times. But I can recall doing youth group activities in high school (late 1990s) and the leaders were out of the bigger contemporary megachurches in the area, and their preferred "worship" music was the same verse, the same four lines, sung about fifteen or twenty times. There was nothing in it but repetition. It wasn't even deeply theological.

Give me I'll Fly Away, Not Afraid (To Cross That River), and The Old Ship of Zion over 7-11 praise songs any day of the week.